“Type Slam” Posters

You’ll notice with a little sleuthing that I haven’t posted any work from my Type 2 class this semester. Perhaps it’s having Type 1 with Ellen Lupton, or perhaps it’s the remedial curriculum, but something has made the class a chore for me, and I do not like any of the assignments or work I am doing for them. Nevertheless, I figured I would post our most recent project. The content is a fictitious event and bad joke (perhaps you’re beginning to see why the class is not my favorite) with some famous designers, most of whom my instructor misspelled. The above solution will be my final, below are some other ideas. (more…)

Ampersand Book

My latest book for Laurie Snyder’s Artist’s Books class. Yeeeeaaaahhhhhhh it’s a little typical-graphic-design-student-project-ey, but I do not care. I went through all 900+ fonts on my computer and selected what I find to be some of the most interesting, beautiful, or historically significant ampersands. Paired with their designer and in chronological order, all the way from Bembo in 1495 to Jos Buivenga’s FREE Delicious, designed just last year. They were transferred from laser prints with wintergreen oil onto tan Rives BFK, and bound accordion fold style with some sourced leather covers (I hope to write an article about sourcing leather soon).

This was my first time working with leather or oil transfers, and both processes were very rewarding. I love the texture created by the transfer, and the leather was a lot easier to work with and acquire affordably than I anticipated. I think I will be doing more work with both of them in the future.

Detail shots in the unabridged post.

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Experimental Numerals

While paying tremendous amounts of attention today in “The History of Existentialism,” I doodled out this non-lining, mostly sans-serif set of numerals on some Kierkegaard. I am quite fond of the little guys. Does anyone know of a font with a numeral set that lines like this?

Typography of the Web: Serif Fonts

On screen display tends to focus on sans-serif typefaces, so unfortunately all of the serif fonts truly available to a webdesigner can be covered in one post. There are only two truly web safe serif fonts: Times New Roman (Times), and Georgia. The latter is found on both Mac and Windows operating systems, with Times and Times New Roman, essentially identical fonts (at least in terms of the web), appearing on Mac and Windows operating systems respectively. (more…)

Typography of the Web: Lucida Grande/Lucida Sans Unicode

Two of the lesser known, or at least lesser used, browser-safe fonts out there are Lucida Grande and Lucida Sans Unicode, bundled with Mac and Windows operating systems, respectively. Like Verdana, they are humanist alternatives to the Grotesk and Neo-Grotesk Helvetica and Arial, and Lucida Grande is actually the font used by OS X, including Safari. (more…)

Typography of the Web: Arial Black, Gadget, and Impact

Dealing with the fatties today: Arial Black, Gadget, and Impact. These fonts are much heavier in weight and very often will not change appearance when you apply a text style, such as bold or italic, to them. They can give your headings a lot of extra punch and give your whole site more character, but they should be used sparingly and NEVER in a large chunk of content unless you want all of your viewers/readers to leave forever. (more…)

Typography of the Web: Verdana, Geneva, and Tahoma

Continuing the sans-serif fonts, today I am addressing Verdana, Geneva, and Tahoma in terms of the web. Verdana is classified as a humanist font, and the only one of the aforementioned three found on both Windows and Mac operating systems (Tahoma was not bundled with Mac until OSX 10.5 [Leopard]). (more…)

Typography of the Web: Arial and Helvetica

Today’s web typography article focuses on the two most commonly used sans-serif fonts in web design: Arial and Helvetica. In the professional design world, Helvetica is widely recognized as one of the finest, most balanced, sans-serif fonts available. Crafted by the Swiss typographer Max Miedinger in 1957, Helvetica has become so popular and widely used that in 2007 Gary Hustwit released a documentary under the font’s name chronicling the use of Helvetica in contemporary design. If you ever get a chance to see it, I HIGHLY recommend it.

Arial on the other hand (more…)

Typography of the Web: Font Introduction

Today I am beginning a series of articles dedicated to the subject of Typography in Web Design. The internet has drastically broadened the scope of design, and these days gajillions of people from all walks of life are trying their hand at web design. A trend I have noticed in amateur, and some professional, web design is a complete disregard or lack of attention paid to the type on the site. Not only does the text on a site communicate almost all of the content to the viewer, it can make or break your design. With this series of articles I will discuss, at a level appropriate for all readers, typography on the web, web safe fonts, CSS attributes you can use to adjust your text, and everything in between. (more…)